The transformation of Glòries continues to advance. The Barcelona City Council and the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona (CZFB) have signed a protocol to promote the construction of a new public tower in one of the city's most strategic urban areas. The future building will combine subsidized housing, administrative uses, and community facilities, with a minimum planned area of 35,000 square meters.
The project will be built on a plot located at number 254 of Diagonal Avenue, at the confluence with Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes and Ciutat de Granada street, in the district of Sant Martí. The action aims to reinforce Glòries' role as a new urban center and, at the same time, increase the supply of public housing in the city.
The planned distribution of uses reserves 10,000 square meters for subsidized housing, 20,000 square meters for administrative uses, and 5,000 square meters for community facilities. The combination of these three elements responds to the urban model that Barcelona has been promoting for years in the Glòries area, where housing, economic activity, public services, and citizen spaces coexist.
The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, has defended the project as a way to recover the public vocation of an area long pending development. As he highlighted, the action will allow addressing the needs of nearby neighborhoods such as el Clot and el Camp de l'Arpa, in addition to setting a timeline for the definitive execution of the project.
The initiative will be led by the Consorci de la Zona Franca, which will assume the promotion and execution of the works, as well as the initial financing of the development. The organization will also subsequently manage the building intended for offices. The design of the future tower will be chosen through an architectural competition that will be announced next autumn. The planned schedule contemplates that the drafting of the project will begin during 2027 and that the works can start between the end of 2028 and the beginning of 2029.
The forecast is that the first part of the complex to come into operation will be precisely the one destined for subsidized housing, one of the priorities set by the city council in a context of increasing pressure on the Barcelona residential market.
The new tower will be incorporated into an environment that has undergone a profound urban transformation in recent years. The remodeling of the Plaça de les Glòries, the opening of the park, the arrival of new facilities, and the consolidation of the technological district have turned this space into one of Barcelona's main growth hubs.
The Zona Franca reinforces its presence in the city
The project also represents a new step in the Consorci de la Zona Franca's strategy to expand its role beyond the industrial and logistics sector. In recent years, the entity has promoted initiatives linked to innovation and the new economy, such as DFactory Barcelona, the 3D Incubator, or the Logistics 4.0 Incubator, in addition to organizing events such as SIL, the Barcelona New Economy Week (BNEW), or the Barcelona Woman Acceleration Week (BWAW).
For the special delegate of the State in the CZFB, Pere Navarro, the new tower is part of a line of collaboration with the City Council that has already allowed the development of other city projects, such as the transfer of land for protected housing in Sant Andreu or in la Marina del Prat Vermell.
With this new action, Barcelona adds a new piece to the transformation of Glòries, an area that in little more than two decades has gone from being one of the city's main road junctions to becoming a space destined to concentrate housing, economic activity, facilities, and public services.